Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Has Gina Rinehart done us all a favor by her ham-fisted attempt to stifle the only moderately-balanced privately owned newspapers in the country, by making it obvious Big Money thinks the press can be bought as a proxy means of buying politicians?

The world’s richest woman, mining magnate Rinehart, has made it plain she wants to make Fairfax (The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, as well as numerous popular radio stations) more mining-friendly, more anti-scientific-consensus, and I suspect, more against the opinion of independent economists when it comes to policy in general.

No more can informed debate dismiss as ridiculous what was previously almost held as "conspiracy theory" the notion that Big Money will seek to control the press to control debate, and policy.

She has certainly increased the feelings progressives have to a decent media sector that, at least as a whole sector, is theoretically important to a liberal democracy.

She cannot trash the brand, and profitability, while avoiding the wrath of corporate regulators, without a complete takeover. This will at least raise the price of fairfax shares during a takeover, putting money in the pockets of people who have been supporting better journalism, and more likely to contribute to society with it than Gina ever would!

Her claims that moving to the right editorially is the fix to Fairfax’s woes is rendered ridiculous when the centrist Fairfax, just in Melbourne, sells more newspapers, at least 25% more, than the pro-plutocrat Murdoch "The Australian" does across the entire nation. She is either stupid, or a liar, or both – and proof not everyone, especially with inherited wealth, should be listened to.

If she does destroy what existing investors see as their most valuable asset and product differentiator – relatively independent journalism – then most readers will move their habits online to the likes of ABC Drum for their daily dose of analysis, opinion, and "letters to the editor".

The timing, with Murdoch on the nose with criminal investigations in England for privacy violations and improper political interference, could not have been more likely to inflame progressives.

By bringing forward the rationalization in size of the print edition, moving many classifieds to the net, less trees will be killed, and the latte sippers will have more room on their tables in cafes!

While progressives may be angry at Gina in the short term, it may be the pigs, the "one percent", the "five percent", those against evidence-based policy, that will be angrier with her in the long term. That’s not guaranteed, but it is a possibility, a possibility the arrogance of Big Money is naturally too stupid to consider.

Gina Rinehart has absolutely nothing to contribute to the transformation of the company into a profitable digital publisher and is not interested in it anyway, …&nbsp:the combination of print and digital publishing simply does not work. They are completely different products with different uses, and the construction and operation of them require totally different ways of thinking.

"In defence of independent media", Malcolm Fraser, former PM, once-bogeyman of the left, now the only publically-active elder statesman in the country, (Business Spectator, 2012-06-19)

Media should not be under the direct control of special interest groups whether they belong to this country or to other countries. That is why we need diversity of media ownership. That is why I stood on the back of a truck with Gough Whitlam overlooking Fitzroy Gardens long years ago, to try and prevent the Fairfax empire falling into foreign hands. A foreign owner has interests that are not ours. A mining magnate has specific industry interests that are not necessary those of Australia.

This review was first published, with minor edits, as a guest post over at skepticlawyer.com.au. On republishing "at home" I’ll being adding a few other links about the book, and to other places, as time permits. I would like to thank my far-from-lefty friends over at skepticlawyer for their invitation. There will be more comments over there, as it’s a blog with far greater readership.

"Left Turn", with the secondary title "Political essays for the New Left", edited (I’d say "assembled") by Antony Lowenstein and Jeff Sparrow, is a series of essays from a range of lefties with different perspectives and concerns, each essentially a single issue, with some "doubling up". The introduction and back-cover blurb acknowledge the despair of many of the left, and offer the promise of suggestions for a way for the left to make a difference again.

It’s a book of bits, disparate opinions, varying styles, and varying quality. That makes it tricky to review – like a food critic trying to give a concise impression of a "bring-a-plate" dinner, nothing consistent, apart from in this case, needing to say "Hang on … there was no dessert … where is my dessert?"

If there is something striking about the book for me, it was what is missing.

Reading the book feels like being in a slightly too-small room full of ardent lefties, all wired on lattes, tongues loosened with chardonnay, everybody talking at once. Aaaah … memories of times before I met my grandson’s grandmother, when Big Mal Fraser was the Big Bad … the nods or wry smiles at good points, the rolled eyes at stating-the-bleeding-obvious and the lowered slowly-shaking head at clangers.

If you are much younger than I am, you might instead feel you are reading a "Best of Larvatus Prodeo" – for better and worse.

The "bring-a-plate" dinner has some tasty bits. Some morsels come with a nice dipping-sauce of self-criticism. There are few, not quite enough, meaty bits of common-sense suggestions.

Then there are the bits where something wasn’t trimmed properly before cooking, the bits you bite on, then wonder whether you risk gagging on it, or whether it is possible, in a polite way, to reach into the back of your mouth with your fingers, grab the horrible gristly bit, and put it on the side of the plate – where, sadly, everybody can see what was served up.

"Capitalism is, after all, inextricably linked to the contemporary concept of ‘being a slut’."- Jacinta Woodhead – Sexiness and Sexism

Oh dear. Where’d that come from? Now … nobody brought any napkins to wipe my fingers after disentangling that from my uvula. If by capitalism you mean Adam Smith capitalism, then I am confused – but then, Marx and Engels missed predicting the inevitability of that inextricable linkage too, so I guess I can forgive myself.

This is one problem that comes from the left talking to itself, expecting not to be pulled up by other lefties when making statements that are "out there" as if they are self-evident, needing no justification. I guess there is a karaoke machine at the bring-a-plate dinner, with everybody getting up, expecting that really bum notes won’t be commented on among friends – yet … it’s not a private party … there are righties wandering past the doors, scrunching their faces in pain while laughing at the bits horribly off key. This is not the way to help yourself to be taken seriously when you are complaining about not being taken seriously.

One thing the book does correctly, I imagine due to the editors, is minimize use of the term capitalism, with "neoliberalism" named again and again as the "Big Bad".

This thing done correctly, however, points to what I see as the flaw in the book, the "where was dessert?" moment: there is a place between the left and neoliberals, not a small place, not terra nullius, but with many good thinkers, wanting, like many lefties, decent humane outcomes, evidenced-based policy development, better discourse in the parliament and the press, and just as depressed about how things are going.

The "missing dessert" problem is made worse when the book discusses the way the media and politics now operate, what I see (but not much discussed in the book) as the way anti-intellectualism is pandered to because it avoids the need to deal with evidence when developing policy. The flawed processes, the social conservatism, the absence of Jefferson’s informed and active citizenry is just as troubling to "decent righties", who would make such good and necessary allies, are not mentioned, and certainly, there is no reaching out to the progressive right, no suggestion of this being a way forward.

SNIPPETS

Perhaps given the bittiness of the book, a few bits, albeit possibly out of context, are useful. Given this review is hosted by women, it’s probably appropriate to select bits written by women, and mainly on women’s issues.

Sexism

"Indeed, abortion still falls under the Crimes Act in every Australian state and territory, save Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. … This illicitness fits nicely with the conservative worldview – and the importance of the nuclear family. That’s perhaps why, despite the gains from sexual liberation being subsumed by neoliberalism, women’s reproductive rights are the one area the marketplace hasn’t claimed. The market may very well hold all other aspects of women’s bodies in its grasp, but social conservatism still reigns over abortion, self-abortion, and reproductive products. "- Jacinta Woodhead – Sexiness and Sexism

Reasonable observations, some facts, and a justifiable interpretation. The book contains enough such bits to be worth reading, if you are into political essays.

"Feminism needs a program that … stops focussing on debates about semantics and pornography, and, instead, returns to collective action with broader tangible goals. … [long dot dot dot to next page] … Maybe a contemporary feminist movement should concentrate on the right to free abortion-on-demand, without the doctor’s or the court’s permission."- Jacinta Woodhead – Sexiness and Sexism

Good – some self-criticism, and a sensible enough suggestion about what to do, perhaps a bit bleeding obvious, but worth saying nonetheless, especially for those on the left hung up about semantics, … but … no mention of the natural allies in the progressive right who want those same tangible outcomes.

Media

There are two essays on the media, one by Antony Lowenstein, the other by Wendy Bacon. These, along with the introduction, are perhaps the strongest parts of the book, perhaps because they focus on the systemic problems that block progress on every other part of the "lefty" agenda, and have fewer "gristly bits" that will make decent righties gag. There are criticism of journalists as mere stenographers passing on information, of the media not always conspiring against good policy and debate, merely being a bit gutless in order to get the favor of politicians, the privilege of an exclusive or a leak.

"Progressive media needs to reclaim the democratic philosophical underpinnings of journalism … a scientific approach to the testing of evidence, which does not preclude an interpretive point of view … the ‘claim of humanity’ to the principles of journalism. The claim states that journalists’ primary claim is to truthful, independent informing of a global public humanity."- Wendy Bacon – A Voice for the Voiceless

Again, this is something decent righties want too – journalists doing what they are supposed to do in order to justify the privileged position of journalists in a democracy. But … no mention of the natural allies.

I was surprised, given the obvious problem of public disengagement, and indeed general antipathy to thinking, that I couldn’t find (maybe I reading too quickly) discussion of the success of The Jon Stewart Show as part of the way forward, throwing bricks at screwups regardless of which "side" is responsible for the screwup.

WHO CAN GET SOMETHING FROM THE BOOK

"Left Turn" is useful to lefties, and the most useful is the self-criticism, perhaps best done in "The Toxicity of Smugness" by Christos Tsiolkas. We need more of this.

The book has many good "factoids" useful for dropping into other conversations, pointing to failures in how our society operates, although the flaws are already obvious to lefties (and quite a few decent righties) and not uncommonly provided, if not put together to form a "message", in the mainstream media.

There will be the righties who read it, and go "I told you so" at the self-criticisms, look at the bits of sloganeering and roll their eyes and perhaps have greater reason to dismiss lefties in general. Still, the wry giggles are giggles, and laughter is good medicine.

Maybe some of the decent righty readers will see a snippet, and say to themselves, "well, yes, that’s a good point, and I am worried about that too." Every little bit of that helps, but I doubt it is "friendly" enough to decent righties in general tone to encourage acceptance of all the points that could be accepted.

The indecent righties, however, will enjoy the book no end, find every single "gristly bit", put on a great show of gagging, and make the left look sillier than it deserves to be. Of course, the indecent righties won’t point out the biggest flaw of the book, the "missing dessert" problem – oh, no – can’t have the decent folk of the right and left joining forces and spoiling the fun the hypocrites are having!

THE BOOK THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

If the problem facing the left is being considered irrelevant by the mainstream, if we need to make an impact again, make progress, then we need to have as much in our arsenal as possible.

So we should be aware of our natural allies among decent righties. We need to be able to criticize neoliberalism, and the failures of the financial market, with arguments that are valid, and more likely to get the attention of the unthinking mob, including the aspirationalists who assume anything labelling itself as capitalist is good, anything smacking of intellectualism bad.

We need to use the weapons the decent right provides for us. The Economist magazine, well-informed and a devout believer in free markets, warned for years about an impending financial meltdown and a housing bubble – their prognostications and criticisms of bailouts are surely useful, cannot be dismissed by the lumpenproletariat as the rantings of the smug lefty intellectual elite. Similar weapons are available from The Adam Smith institute, pointing out that the advantages of the flexibility of free markets and competition are lost when there is a political system that allows existing commercial players to get politicians to institutionalize moral hazard, make it difficult for new players or constructively disruptive products to compete – something as harmful, if not more so, than the state intruding in markets openly and for openly-discussed reasons.

It would surprise many that The Economist is very much for climate change action, because effective climate change actions, not the symbolic ones proposed by many governments are necessary anyway, good for business in a world of finite resources.

The cream on the missing dessert is the mutual respect, the strength through dialectic that comes from engaging with the decent righties, who are part of the intellectual elite, share a large part of the progressive agenda particularly where the underlying democratic processes are concerned. Jefferson’s informed and active citizenry essential for a functioning democracy is highly desired by the left, but Jefferson wasn’t a lefty. Edmund Burke’s arguments against British militarism and lack of due process for prisoners during the American Revolution, with so many parallels to the militarism of the USA today and the excesses of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, would fit right in with the lefty agenda – but Edmund Burke called himself a Conservative, and even John Howard (hypocritically, and he knew it), claimed there is Burkean Conservatism running in the blood of the Liberal Party.

Being more specific, and practical, Keynes and Hayek were on very good terms, admired the work of each other, while admitting disagreements.

The book that could have been would have used progressive righty arguments as well, and ideally, got some progressive righties as contributors – right and left not selling out or softening, but keeping each other honest, both fighting on their own high grounds against the common foes.

Are there big systemic problems that lefties would acknowledge as big systemic problems? Do we have, as Barry Jones puts it, the most highly qualified yet least educated cohort in history? Do we have politicians on all sides who no longer represent the people but are the puppets of faceless men in the back rooms of the party machines? Do we have regulatory and legislative capture, news-cycle political agenda for soundbites, rather than evidence-based policy development and the demand for it?

Would those same problems be recognized as systemic, preventing movement on important specific issues, by progressive righties?

The book that could have been would not be titled "Left Turn", but engaged all those influenced by Enlightenment values, it would have been called "Fall In, Forward March".

The infamous 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial" pitched Tennessee against a teacher who dared to cover Darwin and evolution in class.

The governor of Tennessee has allowed the passage of the ‘monkey bill’, giving public-school teachers licence to teach alternatives to those mainstream scientific theories often attacked by religious and political conservatives.

If Pell did mean culturally inferior, the culture intellectually inferior, then he is absolutely correct.

After all, if doing the "What have the Romans ever done for us" sketch from Monty Python, substituting Jews for Romans, what would he have? One item – it is the culture which inflicted Abrahamism on the world … the millenia of wars, crusades, fundamentalists and hate … including George Pell himself.

The over-praised King David et al were nothing but the East Med version of the Taliban, violent religious oafs in the hills fighting the culturally literate Phoenicians (such as the Philistines) down on the coast, Philistines who were busy inventing our alphabet (the Greeks grabbed Phoenician letters, and rotated them 90 degrees, and the rest is history, written down).

Abrahamism was an "the particular sky fairy who prefers our tribe and helps us commit genocide and war crimes". The oft-criticized "sword verses" of the Koran are as warm and gentle as fuzzy bunnies compared to the celebrated (yes!) stories in Exodus and Joshua. Wipe out all the Canaanites when Joshua invaded?" And their, kids, their wives, their cattle, their goats … that’s all good, a wonderful victory, to the Abrahamists.

If being happy about a genocide (whether or not it happens) of the Canaanites, but not happy about the actions of Hitler, isn’t morally inferior, total bigotry, what is?

The same attitude keeps resurfacing with Abrahamism, despite the "softening" to a universal rather than tribal god during the Babylonian exile, exposed to Zoroastrianism. Oooh, those evil Babylonians, making the exiles a little more tolerant to others!

We get the crusades, we get the bigotry of Pell, we get the violence of Islamist terrorists, we get millenia, at least since the time of Constantine, of Abrahamic "you are subhuman" to people of different color, creed, gender or sexual orientation – oh – and of course, all the Abrahamist nutters who are anti-science.

Oh well, the attitude of Jews to "He who must not be named" does have resonance with a far-less vicious supernatural being familar to all Harry Potter fans.

Compared to the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians, Phoenicians, … and so many other cultures in the region, what has Jewish culture ever down for us?

Genesis Is Myth

Pell comments on the Adam and Eve myth as a religious story rather than literal truth caused another storm, with a different group of extremists.

Anybody with at least half a brain knows that it’s myth, but does Pell have any choice given his other statements over the years justifying dogmatic bigotry?

There are two conflicting creation stories in Genesis, both can’t be correct, both cannot be literally true, and if Pell picks one over the other, he must give his reasons for that – a level of Biblical scholarship that would undermine the entire tome – the bigotry of Leviticus and the rantings of Paul.

But Pell knows his flock, the lambs-to-the-slaughter, and the other mob who cite biblical verses as authorization to be bigots, won’t have that scholarship. No harm done to his agenda as far as he is concerned.

GEORGE PELL: Normally you go to a busy person because you know they’ll do it and so for some extraordinary reason God chose the Jews. They weren’t intellectually the equal of either the Egyptians or the…

TONY JONES: Intellectually?

GEORGE PELL: Intellectually, morally…

TONY JONES: How can you know intellectually?GEORGE PELL: Because you see the fruits of their civilisation. Egypt was the great power for thousands of years before Christianity. Persia was a great power, Caldia. The poor – the little Jewish people, they were originally shepherds. They were stuck. They’re still stuck between these great powers.

TONY JONES: But that’s not a reflection of your intellectual capacity, is it, whether or not you’re a shepherd?

GEORGE PELL: Well, no it’s not but it is a recognition it is a reflection of your intellectual development, be it like many, many people are very, very clever and not highly intellectual but my point is…

On Genesis as Myth

TONY JONES: So are you talking about a kind of Garden of Eden scenario with an actual Adam and Eve?

GEORGE PELL: Well, Adam and Eve are terms – what do they mean: life and earth. It’s like every man. That’s a beautiful, sophisticated, mythological account. It’s not science but it’s there to tell us two or three things. First of all that God created the world and the universe. Secondly, that the key to the whole of universe, the really significant thing, are humans and, thirdly, it is a very sophisticated mythology to try to explain the evil and suffering in the world.

TONY JONES: But it isn’t a literal truth. You shouldn’t see it in any way as being an historical or literal truth?

GEORGE PELL: It’s certainly not a scientific truth and it’s a religious story told for religious purposes.

Like this:

The consultation about sentencing by Ballieu’s Vic Libs seems, from the structure, bent on whipping up another Laura Norder storm.

To be fair, it’s better structured than a typical yes/no "do crims get off too lightly" reader poll in a tabloid, but it is still dangerously simplistic.

At the end of the survey is a list of factors that might alter sentencing, things like whether the person was drunk, low IQ, impact on the victim… This should have come first, before the section asking for judgements on case studies. (Ask any teacher about well designed exams – you do the bits with individual elements first to get people warmed up, then give the questions that require all the elements to be integrated!)

Like this:

I admit hoping the impasse in the US continues until a US default – as it would do much good worldwide, not the least, help the US citenzery a great deal, although in the long term

For one, the US dollar needs to be treated on its merits, devalued by the market rather than priced at a premium on the basis of nostalgia.

A default, then backdown of the Republicans so employees are paid, would through a low greenback and deserved loss of consumer confidence, might help muzzle consumerism first in the US and then across the world.

Like this:

Is this why the bastards high up in penthouse and executive suites think they are better than everyone else – because of where they spend their time? Perhaps even why "upstairs" thinks "downstairs" are worth less?

Based on grounded cognition theories, the current study showed that judgments about ability were regulated by the subjects’ perceptions of their spatial height. In Experiment 1, we found that after seeing the ground from a higher rather than lower floor, people had higher expectations about their performance on a knowledge test and assigned themselves higher rank positions in a peer comparison evaluation. In Experiment 2, we examined the boundary conditions of the spatial height effects and showed that it could still occur even if we employed photos rather than actual building floors to manipulate the perceptions of spatial heights.

So… it would be interesting to do followup studies on wage differentials, workplace attitudes (including friction, resentfulness, arrogance) from staff to senior management, and from senior management to staff, based on building layout.

What effect does this have on resistance of those on high to requests or suggestions from those on the ground floor, and what might this do to organizational efficiency?

Hell, in city blocks, adjusting for rent differences and wages, do voting intentions change? Might this paper affect town planning for high-rise buildings, one party pushing it more than another, even pushing it more or less depending on how marginal a seat is?

No wonder Kirk never took any real notice of Scotty down in the engine saying "She canna handle any more o’ this Cap’n"!

Like this:

Crap happens. It has always happened. It always will. So why aren’t our education systems giving to people some of the best means of dealing with that crap? Tools that never age, are easily available, cheap, and nobody has ever really criticized in the last couple of millenia?

Even fixing up the biased Christianity in our schools, replacing it merely with comparative religion and ethics classes: good, but not good enough. We need to provide kids with the tools for consolation and strength, the classical personal philosophies of the likes of Marcus Aurelius.

It’s deprivation, deprivation bordering on abuse.

Over the last couple of years, contact with a few of old uni friends has been re-established – and a couple of them have been having a hard time. Intelligent folk, decent, crap from the fates, from spouses, from family courts … and there is one bit of advice that seems to have done the most good – and started doing good almost straight away:

Seriously, check out wikipedia on "Meditations" and Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor who wrote it, check out his wikiquotes, and remember this guy had the weight of the known world on his shoulders, and despite later (unprovable) diagnoses as suffering from depression, ruled pretty damn well, and his notes on how to view the world and the crap happening allowed him to rule well. Have a browse, and if some of it rings true, get yourself the Penguin translation and open it at random – each paragraph stands on it’s own, so even if depression is hitting your cognition as you say, it’s in easy to digest bite-sized pieces. Then come back to me if you want more of the Stoics and the Epicureans.

Well, usually within a day I’m getting emails that are "Wow! Never knew this stuff – I mean, I’ve seen him as, you know, the good emperor in ‘Gladiator’, but …"

Skepticlawyer has a(nother) good post "Excusitis" (2011-07-25) talking of the "no true scotsman" fallacy – giving a wide range of examples across the political spectrum. This error is something many in the less-decent right have been, and will be, doing in the wake of the Breivik atrocities in Norway.

We in the left should acknowledge those on the right who are thinking logically, with decent motives, and help them clean up the fifth column of bastards and inflammatory voices within the right. It will give us on the left a chance to have a proper debate where we’ll have to keep on our toes – be protagonists not antagonists.

But those on the right who choose not to reflect, choose to dismiss Breivik as unrelated to the rhetoric of right-wing pundits, are fair game for derision and exposure by the left.

The decent righties can be troubled and reflective. We on the left need them, and need to help them reflect rather than attack the good with the bad, causing knee jerk defences, the debate about extremism turned merely into "two dogs barking"

Consider the predicament and honesty and basic decency of "Anonymous John" from Sweden, commenting on the sweep-Breivik-under-the-carpet post over at OzConservative – it’s something every lefty should read and reflect on to know what we should do next:

I’d thought the label "madman" would be applied if the mass-murderer was white and non-moslem, if the mass-murderer was from the left or the right.

But, thinking about the effect of who was killed by Breivik, the gutting of the Norwegian lefty talent base, I think the likes of the Murdoch press would identify such politically-motivated terrorism as such, if and only if it was something like a (very hypothetical) watermelon mass-murderer, going into a Young Liberals annual general meeting and wiping out a similar proportion of talent.

Like this:

I am suspecting that Breivik’s targetting of the best and brightest youth of the left in Norway was not to strike terror – but to remove talent, to weaken the left.

It’s wiped a massive proportion of the talent the left has, talent about to enter real-world politics over the next decade.

It has gutted the left’s talent pool, effective for the next few generations: – the young talent so tragically removed would doubtless have had children and grandchildren of similar talents, of similar leftist leanings.

There are indications about the net that Breivik thought strategically.

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Unless you are part of that demographic-to-be-ignored, the latte-sipping bleeding-hearts, both left and small-l-liberal, here is a quick guide to labels and policies regarding mass murderers, or assassins of your own prime minister:

Demographic:

Swarthy Moslem

White Lefty Latte Sipper

White Christian Anti-Moslem Righty

Swarthy Ultra Orthodox Jew Righty

Psychology:

Evil

Mad

Mad

Mad

Your Ideology:

Evil

Mad and Dangerous

Irrelevant because of insanity

Irrelevant because of insanity

Punishment:

Execute or incarcerate forever without trial

Criminally insane ward in a prison

Criminally insane ward in a prison

Imprison

Others in the demographic:

Kick them out of the country, don’t let any more in, or subject them to security agencies bullying.

Make them shut up, and especially don’t let them speak in schools or mass media..

The Right Stuff

Patriots

Assumption next atrocity is from the demographic:

99%

1%

0%

0%

Assumption the demographic’s policies will destroy civilization:

100%

100%

0%

0%

Personally, I’d classify all four as mad, and where frank psychosis is incomplete, the evil results come from improper education, incitement by others in the same demographic, and twisted readings of the texts of the ideology.

In other words, things that could be largely prevented by a combination of decent community mental health services, and an education system that gives fair exposition of all texts used by nutters as pretexts for action, stressing the humanity in those texts, and showing how the inhumane parts should be deprecated.